The Rasputin File (14 page)

From the tsar’s diary: ‘17 October…We had breakfast with Nikolasha and Stana … We sat and talked, waiting for Witte … I signed the Proclamation at five. After such a day my head felt heavy, and my thoughts were starting to get muddled. Help us, O Lord. Save Russia and grant her peace.’

‘20 October. Nikolasha, Militsa, and Stana dined with us.’

The 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th were all, according to Nicholas’s diary, days when the Montenegrin princesses were visiting. So it was in fact on one of those days that Militsa told Alix about the marvellous Siberian peasant. She was preparing the impressionable Alix, readying her for her gift — a meeting with the prophet of the people. And Militsa had much to talk about. For there were mystical correspondences of the sort the ‘black princess’ was so fond of. Like Serafim of Sarov, Father Grigory (as everyone now called him, avoiding his unpleasant-sounding last name) had left home and wandered widely. And like Serafim of Sarov, he had gone about his village surrounded by women followers. And as with Serafim, there had been calumniation, and his holiness and mystery had been the subject of an investigation. How Alix’s heart must have beat! It all fitted. Philippe had not left them! He had sent them a defender! Just as he had promised, he had come in ‘the form of another’! When all around they were being advised to think about the ship that would carry them out of chaos to England and safety.

The first of November arrived. The terrible month of October had finally come to an end. It was their last day in Peterhof, and they were preparing to move back to their beloved Tsarskoe Selo. How Alix had waited for the old month to carry away their misfortunes with it. And how significant it was that on the first day of the new month they were going to see the remarkable peasant at Militsa’s.

From Nicholas’s diary: ‘I November … We went to Sergeevka at four. We had tea with Militsa and Stana. We met the man of God Grigory from the province of Tobol … In the evening I packed and did a good bit of work, and then I spent the rest of the time with Alix.’

‘2 November. We drove … to Tsarskoe Selo, arriving at 5.20 … It was good to be back in the cosy old rooms.’

5

WITH THE TSARS

The Seduction

Rasputin himself recounted what happened that November evening.

The File, from the testimony of Bishop Feofan: ‘I personally heard from Rasputin that he produced an impression on the former empress at their first meeting. The sovereign, however, fell under his influence only after Rasputin had given him something to ponder.’

It had not been very difficult for that expert in human faces to see how much she needed him, how tormented she was by the misfortunes that had befallen them, and how much his words about simple peasants and their loyalty had moved her: the people would not let their tsar down. He later reported that first conversation to Iliodor, who, however primitively, set it forth in his book: ‘When revolution raised its head up high, they were very scared … and it was “Let us get our things together” … But I talked to them a long time, persuading them to spit on all their fears, and rule.’ And that made a very great impression on her. It was more complicated with the tsar. The tsar was preoccupied, too busy with the terrible things he had to deal with. And, apparently, he did not really listen to Rasputin. To ‘give him something to ponder’, it would be necessary for Rasputin to meet him again.

But Militsa, appreciating the impression that he had made on Alix, once again warned the peasant that he must not try to meet with the ‘tsars’ by himself. Otherwise, it would be the end of him.

‘My explanation of her warning that it would be the end of Rasputin was that there were many temptations at court and much envy and intrigue, and that Rasputin, as a simple, undemanding wandering pilgrim, would perish spiritually under such circumstances,’ Feofan testified in the File.

But Rasputin had entirely different plans. And living in the apartment of
Feofan, who had such close ties to Militsa, no longer suited him. He needed freedom of action.

The Charming General’s Wife

Rasputin in fact already had a number of other places where he could find shelter besides the ascetic Feofan’s shabby apartment. His success in Petersburg had been swift. He had done a great deal since his arrival in the city.

The witness E. Kazakova testified before the Extraordinary Commission that at that time she ‘saw many important ladies … who looked after him and considered him a man of great righteousness, and who cut his nails and sewed them up to attach to their bodices as mementos’. One such lady was the Petersburg lioness and fashionable salon hostess Olga Lokhtina. She was a little over forty but still very good-looking. At the time she had fallen ill. And Rasputin was invited to heal her. Thus they met for the first time just two days after his meeting with the royal family.

Olga Lokhtina was interrogated by the Extraordinary Commission in 1917, and her testimony remains in the File:

I saw Rasputin for the first time on 3 November 1905. By then I had grown disenchanted with society life, having undergone a spiritual change, and I was, besides, very sick with an intestinal neurasthenia, which tied me to my bed. The only way I could move around was by holding onto the wall … The priest Father Medved [at the time one of Rasputin’s loyal admirers] took pity on me and brought Rasputin … From the moment of Father Grigory’s appearance in my home I felt completely restored, and from then on was free of my illness.

So it was into her apartment that Rasputin decided to move.

The File, from the testimony of Feofan: ‘He only stayed with me a little while, since I would be off at the seminary for days on end. And it got boring for him … and he moved somewhere else, and then took up residence in Petrograd at the home of the government official Vladimir Lokhtin.’ Colonel Loman, a friend of the Lokhtins, testified in the File: ‘It was an excellent family home. Lokhtina herself was a beautiful woman of fashion and had a really charming little daughter.’

Father Grigory had chosen their home with care. It was a convenient bridgehead for getting to the royal family. Olga Lokhtina’s husband was an engineer and actual state councillor (a civil rank corresponding to the military rank of general, which is why Lokhtina is often called ‘the general’s
wife’). Lokhtin was in charge of paved roads in Tsarskoe Selo. And it was there, sequestered in the ‘cosy rooms’ of the Alexander Palace, that the royal family now spent the better part of their time. The heir’s illness, which they had made a state secret, required them to live as virtual recluses in order to protect that secret. But through the Lokhtin family, Rasputin was privy to all the court rumours.

Several years later photographs of Lokhtina would be published in the largest Petersburg newspapers, and journalists would try to understand what had happened to that charming woman. How had it come to pass that a fashionable salon hostess, a Petersburg beauty, had ended up begging for alms in bare feet and outlandish clothing?

The peasant impressed her at once. ‘He spoke very interestingly about his life as a wanderer, and during the conversation he hinted at the sins of his listeners and forced their consciences to speak,’ Lokhtina testified. He opened to her a realm of Love and Freedom, where the world of money did not exist and where the only life was that of the spirit. Just a few days after meeting him, the Petersburg matron abandoned her home and daughter and set out with the peasant to his house in Pokrovskoe. Lokhtin gladly let her go so that she could make a complete recovery from her illness in the company of the amazing healer. It did not enter his head to be suspicious of her interest in the uncouth, no longer young peasant.

From Lokhtina’s testimony in the File: ‘At his invitation, I went to visit him in Pokrovskoe, where I stayed from 15 November to 8 December 1905. Travelling with Rasputin was a great pleasure, for he gave life to the spirit. Along the way he predicted the strike and kept saying, “If only we get there first.” And as soon as we arrived, it started.’ It was not hard to predict strikes in those days, of course. The whole country was in the grip of them. But she was eager for miracles and in Pokrovskoe everything was just as miraculous. She saw a submissive peasant family:

I liked the style of his life very much. On meeting her husband, his wife fell down at his feet…His wife’s humility astounded me. When I am right, I yield to no one. And now here was Rasputin’s wife yielding in an argument with her husband, even though it was clear that she was in the right and not him. In reply to my … astonishment, she said, ‘A husband and wife have to live with one heart, sometimes you yield, and sometimes he does’ … We slept where we could, very often in one room, but we slept little, listening to the spiritual conversations of Father Grigory, who, so to speak, schooled us in nocturnal wakefulness. In the morning, if I got
up early, I would pray with Father Grigory…Praying with him tore me from the earth … At home we would pass the time chanting psalms and canticles.

But the investigators had some doubt about the innocence of her life in Pokrovskoe. And she responded:

Yes, he did have the custom of kissing when meeting and even of embracing, but it is only to bad people that bad and dirty thoughts occur … It is also quite true that on one of my visits to the village of Pokrovskoe I bathed together with Rasputin and his family, with his wife and two daughters, and in the absence of bad thoughts, it did not seem either strange or indecent to any of us. I was convinced that Rasputin really was an ‘elder’, both by his healing of me, and by the predictions I had occasion to hear that came true.

Thus did she sweep aside all the suspicions about their sexual relations.

But the truth of Rasputin’s relations with Lokhtina, the first of his fierce devotees known to us, is very important. For otherwise we shall not understand either his teachings or his whole subsequent story. Especially since the studies produced by Rasputin’s new admirers have claimed that the testimony about his sexual liaisons with his followers was invented by his enemies.

But we shall let a friend speak. And one of Rasputin’s closest. Contained in the File is the testimony of his publisher Filippov:

Once in 1911 at his place on Nikolaev Street I was the unexpected witness of a painful scene. Arriving at Rasputin’s early in the morning for tea as was my custom …I saw him behind the screen that separated his bed from the rest of the room. He was desperately beating Madame Lokhtina, who was clad in a fantastic get-up consisting of a white dress hung with little ribbons, and who was holding onto his member, while shouting, ‘You are God!’ I rushed over to him … ‘What are you doing! You are beating a woman!’ Rasputin answered, ‘She won’t let me alone, the skunk, and demands sin!’ And Lokhtina, hiding behind the screen, wailed, ‘I am your ewe, and
you are Christ!’
It was only afterwards that I learned that she was Madame Lokhtina, a devotee of Rasputin’s, who was having an affair with him … She regaled me with so many witty remarks attesting to her great intelligence and good breeding that I was quite amazed by what I had seen.

The other witnesses who met Lokhtina also speak with astonishment of her quick brain and malicious wit. How, then, had the peasant succeeded in forever chaining that brilliant woman to himself? Where did it come
from, that fierce passion that would remain with the unhappy general’s wife for ever, long after the peasant felt nothing but revulsion for the old woman she became? The answer lies in the principal mystery of that man, of which I shall speak later.

The royal family returned to the capital in December 1905. And Lokhtina was nearby as Rasputin considered the steps that he would take in order to see them again. Feofan was right about that: it was Rasputin himself who initiated the next meeting with the royal family.

Retained in the File is the evidence of another important witness, Colonel Dmitry Loman, who appeared before the Extraordinary Commission in 1917. He had been brought for interrogation at the Winter Palace, where he had only recently occupied a state apartment. Loman had made a brilliant career at court: he had been entrusted with the building of the Feodor Cathedral, much loved by the royal family. As witnesses would testify, he had been given the commission through Rasputin’s assistance. When he first met Rasputin, however, he was merely an officer in a Life Guards regiment and a friend of the Lokhtins.

‘I knew Rasputin on his first arrival in Petersburg,’ Loman testified. ‘Rasputin got into the palace the first time in this way: once the sovereign (I pass this along as a rumour) received from a Siberian peasant, from Rasputin, that is, a letter requesting an audience and permission to present him with an icon that for some reason was especially revered. The letter piqued the sovereign’s interest.’

The Leap To The Palace

Loman was right. And the corroboration comes from Rasputin himself. For an undated telegram sent by the peasant to the tsar in 1906 has survived. ‘Tsar Father, having arrived in this city from Siberia, I would like to bring to you an icon of the Righteous Saint Simeon, the Miracle Worker of Verkhoturye…in the faith that the Holy Saint will keep you all the days of your life and aid you in your service for the advantage and happiness of your loyal sons.’ The telegram was apparently written by Lokhtina, the devoted general’s wife, so much does it differ from the incoherent telegrams with which Rasputin would later inundate the ‘tsars’.

And Nicholas did in fact grant the peasant an audience after receiving his telegram. As the tsar would himself later write in a letter to Prime Minister Stolypin which allows us to establish an almost exact date for that truly historic meeting. Historic, for this time the peasant produced such an
impression on the tsar that the highly reserved Nicholas sent his prime minister a remarkable letter about it.

16 October 1906. A few days ago I received a peasant from the Tobol province…who brought me an icon of Saint Simeon of Verkhoturye … He made a remarkably strong impression on Her Majesty and on me. And instead of five minutes, our conversation lasted well over an hour. He will soon be returning to his native region. He has a strong desire to meet you and bless your injured daughter with the icon. [Terrorists had blown up the prime minister’s dacha. He had miraculously survived and had carried his injured daughter out of what was left of the building.] I very much hope that you will find a moment this week to receive him.